14 DAY TRIAL // Previously, I stated that Risen was a challenging game only to later on reconsider my opinion and admit that I did find it difficult. Now I find myself saying that it has become easy. This could be because I'm a relatively chaotic person under my calm, charming exterior but it's more likely because the game has a difficulty curve like a pin on top of a ball of yarn. It may be up high now, but as soon as a cat comes and gives the ball a nudge, you end up on the bottom only to rise again and repeat the cycle endlessly. In the beginning you get a knife to fight all the wildlife and arrogant people you come across. And as long as you play it cool and learn the weakness in everyone's attack, you'll be fine.
But then you're expected to do the same thing, with the same gear and skills but against an army. Solitary animals are now longer found and it seems like every animal on the face of this island decided to hold hands and form a social club. It may be rewarding to finally defeat a pack of moths, but you have pretty much zero chances of succeeding when it takes half a second for the insect to maul you to death. Starting in the Don's swamp is very difficult and you'll probably end up regretting it. But in Harbor Town things prove to be a little more balanced. There are plenty of quests that you can perform without putting your life at risk and the plots and twists are rewarding as well.
I don't know how hard the game is if you join the Monastery, but it's probably a little easier than Harbor Town. The place is kinda like a military camp for the confused, where everyone can become a member, whether they want to or not. But at least they give you some combat training and it is so far the only place you can learn magic. So the difficulty of the game may be influenced by the faction you choose, but even so things look grim. If the game was hard with the Don in the beginning, and easier with the other factions, now that I can glide through quests, it really makes me wonder. It started out hard and now it's really easy, but does that mean it will be ridiculously easy with the other factions once I advance or some karmic justice will take place and things will even out as character progression will stall? On a personal note, I'd like to brag with the fact that I've defeated a skeleton and a ghoul all by myself. If you've played the game you can see just what an achievement that is.
The point is that as a level 11 Hunter for the Don I can handle things pretty easily. My character is an odd mix of a warrior that focuses on pickpocketing and lock-picking and is a dedicated blacksmith. Like I said, I'm a little chaotic. Still, everything I picked up is incredibly useful. The weapons I can make are some of the best available and I get them for a quarter of the price I would find them at with a trader; also, stealing is the main source of income in the game. Sure, you can hunt, skin and gut animals or have some other respectable job, but everything you sell is at 20 percent off its actual value, so that’s a definite no. I've saved people’s lives, I've even saved a monk's life and even he ripped me off with the same prices. It's like Piranha Bytes wants us to become hardened criminals. As for the game's story, things just start to pick up as a little bit of cooperation with the evil Inquisitions is installed. I'd add more to this, but I wouldn't want to spoil the story.